


providence

by JeanSouth



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:56:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanSouth/pseuds/JeanSouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter which world it is, Sousuke is still sorta in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i could have sworn i had a collection of soumako fics already

Sousuke  _suspects_. Not because Makoto doesn’t normally hang out with him, because he does. And not because he gives Sousuke those nice smiles, either. The slow, happy ones that linger uncomfortably in Sousuke’s mind for the rest of the day, and get him told off his roommates for not paying attention.

It’s because  _normally_ , to get Makoto to make him macadamia nut cookies, he has to come very close to undignified begging. Which he wouldn’t, except they’re all gooey in the center with the distinct crack of nuts inbetween, and they’re perfect with his morning cup of coffee. Sometimes (it’s a secret), he closes his eyes and pretends they live together, and Makoto is still in bed, waiting for his boyfriend to wake him up. Afterwards, he rubs his eyes until they hurt and he’s closer to getting a fucking grip.

“Where’s the body buried?” Sousuke raises both eyebrows, mouth half-full of food and a tupperware box of cookies in front of him. They’re neatly stacked and there must be a dozen there, safeguarded from the other dorm inhabitants. Sousuke resents them for stealing Makoto’s cookies, and his heart wouldn’t be able to take it if Makoto shared a room.

“What body?” Makoto asks, hands folded demurely behind his back. He refuses to meet Sousuke’s eyes, and instead watches a small, glittery silver ball. It’s a weird thing for him to have. It’s more cat-appropriate, and whilst Sousuke would not be averse to stroking Makoto in the most pleasurable ways, the dorms banned pets.

“…Where’s the kitten?” he asks instead, leaning forward on the counter, closer and closer until Makoto leans back and gives in.

“It’s with Nagisa at the moment. I think its mother got run over on the road… It’s only a few weeks old! It needs to be bottle fed, and Nagisa can’t keep him. Getting up at night is killing him! He has entrance exams soon!” Makoto shoots him a pleading look, his eyes wide, and if he holds out much longer, they might fill with crocodile tears. Every time with the tears, and he’s so weak to them; his sisters know it and Rin knows it, and Makoto knows it but he has  _no resistance whatsoever_  to nice eyes that shouldn’t be tearing up. Sousuke drags a hand down his face, lets out a deep sigh, and stands up.

He is a  _man_. He passed six of the most rigorous exams known to mankind to get into medical school, and he can  _smuggle a kitten if he damn well has to._

“Let’s go,” Sousuke’s shoulders are strong, his mouth a grim line as he makes for the door. “And Makoto?”

Behind him, Makoto perks up, their coats in his hands. He has an angelic, slightly blissful smile he should have when they curl up on the couch and feed their baby kitten between them (in Sousuke’s expert opinion).

“I would like beef stew this evening,” he hints, and commits the sweet nod to memory. His crush is ridiculous, but there is no one anywhere near as good to have it on.

-

The kitten howls like a rabid banshee about to go for the kill. Three streets away, he’s sure the dorm supervisor can hear them coming.

“Make him be quiet!” Makoto frowns at him, because of course, it had not howled when in his gentle hands, pressed close to his breast with its head over his heart. “You’re nervous and it’s making him anxious!”

With gentle, soft hands, he maneuvers the kitten until it’s settled snugly on Sousuke’s shoulder, suckling on the edge of his shirt. The big faux-fur collar on his jacket hides the kitten from sight, and its tiny kitten claws dig into his skin in a satisfied rhythm of torture.

“Let’s go.”

-

Eventually, their plans goes without fail, and the kitten mewls pitifully when he sets it down on the settee, removed from his body heat and his absent minded petting. Its eyes are open and it crawls around sluggishly, but he thinks a few weeks is an overstatement, and it’s not far off from being a baby. It keeps mewling while Makoto painstakingly mixes powdered kitten milk and feeds it into a syringe with a wide nuzzle, checking its warmth so as to not shock the kitten.

“I’ve never done this before,” he sounds anxious when he sits, and cradles the kitten on its back in the crook of his arm. It won’t sit still as he tries to give it its first taste of milk, squirming more and more as time passes. For a second, Sousuke hesitates, then slides closer until they’re pressed together. He rearranges the kitten until its paws rest on Makoto’s chest, and guides him to give it the syringe at a slightly awkward angle, letting a tiny bit drip out onto its mouth.

Within seconds it’s lapping at the syringe, ravenous after the short journey, its tiny stomach needing constant sustenance.

“You make a great dad,” Makoto laughs a bit, one hand coming up to tuck a strand of Sousuke’s hair behind his ear. He realizes he’s leaning a bit too close, his hand on Makoto’s thigh to brace him. He takes a risk.

“Then I guess you’d have to be my wife, since you’re a great mother,” his smile is a little hesitant a little cracked, because oh  _god_ , that’s a terrible pick-up line, but Makoto just laughs, and agrees he’ll have to start dinner soon, if Sousuke will look after the kids. 


	2. Chapter 2

The very first time Sousuke meets him, it’s centuries ago, and Makoto is a nurse. He is tired, bags under his eyes, and has a firm, tight-lipped look about him when he breaks a man’s leg to re-set it right. He comes to Sousuke and gives him wood to bite down on, looks into his eyes, and puts him through a bout of excruciating, horrific pain when he fixes Sousuke’s dislocated shoulder.

After that, he meets Makoto again in a tavern when he’s travelling. Some things stay the same. Makoto is always gentle, kind, and has the same green eyes that spark memories of every past life.

“Find me,” Makoto tells him, every lifetime, before they part. Sometimes they grow old together, and Sousuke likes those lives the most. Sometimes, Makoto is taken by plague, or man, or monster, and Sousuke feels like half his heart is missing while he bides his time and waits for the next life to come.

He doesn’t  _remember_ , though, in this life. And he’s plenty… content. He swims, and it’s nice, until his shoulder starts to wear away at his resolve. He lives comfortably; his father is kind, well-off enough to allow him transfers and dorm rooms, and he is young. The world is safe – to an extent. He just has a weird attraction to movies about soul mates, and Rin laughs at him a lot about it. He’s good-natured, but he doesn’t understand the lingering feeling of discomfort Sousuke holds in the pit of his gut.

“Something’s just missing,” Sousuke tries, eventually, to explain, but Rin doesn’t get it and he can’t hold it against him. He doesn’t get it himself, either.

Then Kisumi tells everyone – well, some people – about his shoulder, and he hates every reaction he gets. The anger, the concern, and the well-meaning pity.

“You should have told someone,” Haru scolds him, and really, he has no room to talk about bottling things up. Some kind of emotion lingers behind his eyes, contradicting the stone-faced expression.

“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” Sousuke retorts, and from the corner of his eye, glimpses the tall one from Iwatobi coming closer. Another one of the Power of Fun group from Iwatobi, come to tell him how to live his life. He turns on his heel and leaves before they can tag-team his resolve to work on it himself.

Then Rin finds out, the team finds out, and no reaction is atypical to his expectations. He just wants to get away from it all for a while and talk to someone whose eyes don’t flicker to the broken parts of him. With his jacket in his hands, he takes the first train in any direction and grunts unhappily when it becomes crowded.

Someone as tall as him jostles him, then again, flung about by the motion of the train, and he turns to see.

Then gets caught by green, green eyes and a breathless feeling. He wonders if this is what a panic attack feels like, wonders how long he’s been staring, then tries to break the silence.

“Are you allergic to flowers in this life, too?”

Not the sauvest way he’s ever greeted Makoto, but he basks in the smile, the sweet laughter. Makoto’s hair looks soft and smells of generic shampoo when he steps closer under a guise of the crowd.

“No,” Makoto shakes his head, probably remembering the last trip to the hospital and the way Sousuke had panicked. His eyes linger on Sousuke’s shoulder. “But I guess some things never change…”

Some things, Sousuke assumes, don’t mean the overwhelming desire to kiss him.

“I guess not. Wonder what I did to deserve this, every time…” he sighs, rubbing a hand over it. He guesses it’s better than being shot in the shoulder, though it had been far more heroic, the way he’d risked his life for Makoto. He’s used to as a trump card in arguments for years. He leans closer, taking in the tiny freckles starting to show under the summer sun on the bridge of Makoto’s nose. “Coffee?”

He can never decide if he likes getting to know Makoto all over again more, or if it’s the feeling of finally settling so definitely they know they’ll grow old together.

“I’m more of a tea kind of person,” Makoto looks away, a smirk trying to play on his lips, until he yelps at the feeling of Sousuke prodding a finger gently into his side. Still ticklish.

“Pedantic,” Sousuke scolds light-heartedly, and looks forward to Makoto’s shocked look when he realizes Sousuke likes ginger biscuits this time round.


	3. Chapter 3

“Raise your voice,” Sousuke demands. The long sleeves of his black robes hang to his knuckles, the fabric wrapped around him and cinched at the waist with a leather belt. It makes a change to the white trousers, the shimmering golden belt that the instructors in the cathedral normally wear. It almost suits him.

Obediently, Makoto raises his voice louder, though he’s scared to be caught in the Great Hall, white chalk lines around him in a grand circle, edging inwards with arcane patterns and a scent of demonsbane. His voice trembles when he catches sight of it after years of being taught of alchemy, and sorcery, and how it is frowned upon.

“Keep going,” he thinks Sousuke may sound slightly gentler, carefully not stepping inside the circle, not mussing it. They’ve been preparing for this for weeks; teaching him the patterning of the spell circle, the exact words to the chants, and whilst Sousuke is a cold teacher when it comes to scripture, he is much warmer in the face of Makoto’s fear.

He’s never been  _hot_ , of course, but the rooms they’ve shared have never been less than well-lit, he has hardly been alone, and the power that leaks from Sousuke like a faucet has wrapped around him like a blanket of comfort despite the rumors sinking in their claws.

“You want to be rid of it, don’t you?” Sousuke questions, not breaking eye contact as he lifts his hand, blue witch-fire taking hold there as each candle in the Great Hall snuffs one by one, dark hands throttling the candlesticks until they clatter on the floor, some of them breaking until glass shards litter the altar. He almost wants to stop – Sousuke had warned him of the rage they would face, but he wants to stop, to curl back under the rich, warm sheets and allow Sousuke’s protection to continue.

He feels his voice waver and reaches out a hand, grabbing blindly for Sousuke’s body until their fingertips touch, just barely brush over the barrier, and he’s heartened by the touch after his lectures on the delicacy of spell circles, how easily they’ll shatter if crossed.

If Sousuke is willing to crack the rules for him, surely he can continue.

An ungodly shriek rattles the stained glass windows – anger, topped off with malice. It’s a scream to match the nightmares the monster in his darkness inflicted on him, the hot, breathing body that tossed and turned, its claws dragging past his shoulders when he’d gone to bed alone. It’s an outpouring of rage that never got to devour him, piece by piece, stopped short by Sousuke’s sharp gaze.

“Almost,” he hears Sousuke say, under the deafening roar, and forces more power into his voice through his sore throat, matching the volume with ferocity, fevered and fuelled by the thought of no longer seeing a furrow in Sousuke’s brow upon waking, the tired sighs of overusing his power, and of sneaking back to his room from a night with only fear of being caught by someone who would realize that rumors were in fact truth.

With a final roar, the oppressive, suffocating presence around him fades, leaving them standing in silence, completely still until it is sure it’s never coming back.

“Well done,” the praise warms him, even if it is faint, quiet, with Sousuke looking as exhausted as he feels.

“Tha-” Makoto starts, breaking off on a cough, his throat raw and dry with exertion. Choir never asks for that much effort, nor that much power with a complete disregard of pitch. He catches a smile behind Sousuke’s eyes – pride, too, he thinks, for Makoto’s refusal to give up. Instead of forcing him to speak, Sousuke steps aside to reach for the edge of the carpet they’d folded over, pulling it back into place to hide the chalk circle. No use upsetting the rest of the Order over something they never needed to know. He starts to leave, carefully avoiding the shattered glass until a noise from Makoto stops him.

“There’s too many broken to just hide it,” he reasons, turning back to clamber over a bench towards his room. He looks graceful in the long, black robe, where Makoto feels clumsy and all too close to being exposed. His legs almost feel like they tremble when he follows, locking the door behind him when they’re inside. The glass of water Sousuke brings him is a sweet, cool relief on his battered voice.

“They’re not coming back?” he questions, barely noticing as Sousuke works at their long, complicated belts to get their robes off, striding to the bed naked as the day he was born.

“Never,” Sousuke confirms, allowing the candles to go out, save for the few beside the bed. The darkness still sends chills up Makoto’s spine with a lingering fear, sending him under the covers, warming rapidly with the heat of Sousuke’s body.

“I guess I could stay?” Makoto questions, threading his cold hands together, hiding them between his thighs for warmth. “To be sure?”

Sousuke’s hands join his in seeking warmth, and he takes it as permission.


End file.
